Middle East Truth Is In The Details

June 06, 2001|By Halley S. Faust West Hartford

Stanley Heller [Other Opinion, May 31, ``Palestinians Are Decidedly Of This World''] would have us believe that Israeli President Moshe Katsav, a democratically elected president, should not have been honored at the University of Hartford because he comes from the Likud Party and has condemned Palestinian violence randomly targeted at Israeli citizens.

This same reasoning would have no Democrat honored because all Democrats are responsible for the Vietnam War, or all physicians disqualified because Dr. Josef Mengele was a physician.

Heller misleads his readers by ignoring four clear facts when defending his Palestinian friends:

* The Palestinians accept no blame for the current violence they initiated and continue to perpetuate in their territories and Israel. Had the violence not started and had they accepted former Prime Minister Ehud Barak's broad and generous proposals, they would have their own country by now.

* The Palestinian Authority and its leaders continue severely to violate the Oslo, Wye and Camp David accords in many ways.

* Over 1 million Arabs live within the pre-1967 borders of Israel and have the full democratic right to vote. These Israeli Arabs are not creating violence daily and therefore are not being wounded by defensive action of the Israeli military.

* The Palestinians are the ones who claim no Jews can live in their territories and have created an apartheid-like system. They would forcibly eject any Jews on their claimed territories, the final status of which is supposed to be determined by negotiation, not violence.

Palestinians may be of this world, but Stanley Heller seems to have lost his bearings.